SuperBatober 24: SHALLOW

Back from Chattanooga Comic Con! I was such a great, fun little show! Good crowds, good hosts, good lighting (which is unusual in a convention center) and good friends. Despite a hectic month, I'm glad I made the extra effort to attend. Gosh though... I am SO thankful not to have to travel anywhere for a couple of weeks. I don't think my body can take much more of sitting in airplanes.

Anyhoo, a little commentary about this piece, which was actually inked and watercolored mostly at the show.

I had to scribble up something pretty fast if I wanted to be sure I could get it done this past weekend. Problem was, I didn't really have a clue what to draw for this prompt. Even with the word "shallow" I have a cheerful theme going on with these pieces and wanted to hold to that.

This was my initial sketch:

Which I really like! But I realized it was just too similar to the pose and concept I did for "TOAD". So then I thought, maybe this could be a prequel to that? Kara finding that toad?

And I actually love that toad, and it's sweet, BUT it's also kinda boring. Then I realized (imagine all this thought process happening in the span of ten minutes btw), "Hey--I'm drawing water. What a nice opportunity for the King of Atlantis to show up." But y'know...very tiny.

So that is how this piece came to be. Here it is right before I was about to about to lay down some watercolors on it at Chattanooga Comic Con.

You might notice I've been changing my style slightly for the profiles of Kara & Babs (or rather, staying closer to my original quick roughs). The reason for this is partly to keep things more simple and quicker to get done. But also, I've found that when adding in more detail to those facial features I lose some of the joy and innocence that I want immediately to be conveyed. So that's the reason for that change. It's not permanent and I'm only using it when I feel it works best for a the illustration, such as this one.

Now to figure out what to draw for tomorrow!